FDCPA?
FCRA
!
FCRA!
11% higher factual
higher retention
knowledge level and a
9%
rate than trainees in comparison groups.
Trainees using video games had an
Source: University of Colorado Denver Business School
hear them say things like, 'Oh yeah, I had
problems with that question too.'"
Plus, it's no secret that collectors thrive on
competition. Many gamification products
include a leaderboard component, so
employees can see where they sit in the
compliance rankings each day and are driven
to improve.
"It provides transparency and holds
collectors accountable," said Scott Kendrick,
vice president of marketing at CallMiner.
"If you just get assigned a number in
terms of how you are performing, without
context of what that means in the rest of the
organization, it's somewhat meaningless. But
if you know that you are ranking 15 out of 20
agents on a team, that gives you context and
motivates you to get engaged."
Farrar said her collectors get pretty
competitive about their ranking.
"They can also play from home, so if they
are on vacation they can log in and play-and
they do," Farrar said. "I have a clerical manager
who is very competitive and she is the top in
COLLECTOR 07.18
my organization, and even if she is home sick
she will log in to answer the questions."
STAY RELEVANT & APPEAL TO
TODAY'S WORKFORCE
More than 150 million Americans play video
games, according to the Entertainment
Software Association, and they are most
popular among adults under the age of 49. If
this is what your employees are doing on their
leisure time-and clearly, many of them are-
it might be helpful to incorporate gaming
elements into their workday.
A paper by Microsoft employees Joshua
Williams and Ross Smith analyzing the rise of
productivity games observed that "because the
'teaching' or 'coaching' is framed in a game, they
[participants] receive the feedback in a manner
they are accustomed to learning from already."
The colorful design elements of these
compliance games also help engage employees
in the learning process. This engagement is
crucial-if people don't care what you're telling
them, they won't retain the information.
"We all like good-looking apps and
technology," said Johan Praats, president
of Learn.net. "When you try to recruit new
hires for a collection firm and you show them
you have a learning environment that is
commensurate to the way they behave every
day, which is typically on their iPhones, that's just
what they prefer. And I'm not talking about just
younger generations-it's pretty much anyone."
The way we process information has
changed-or perhaps the old approach to
corporate training programs never really
worked that well to begin with. People can
be lectured for hours and still not retain the
information because it's just too much to
fully absorb.
"You can't drink out of a firehose, but you
can drink out of a drinking fountain," said
Todd Anderson, associate partner of sales and
marketing for The Intelitech Group. "That's
why daily questions work."
Anne Rosso May is editor of Collector
magazine.
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